Wednesday, May 7, 2014

UC Irvine Cancels Nonie Darwish Speech

On the heels of Brandeis University’s controversial decision to rescind an honorary degree to women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, organizers of a week-long pro-Israel event called iFest, which is currently underway at the University of California, Irvine, say they have been forced to cancel a scheduled speech by Nonie Darwish, a prominent pro-Israel speaker. Lead iFest organizer Daniel Narvy, president of the campus group Anteaters for Israel (AFI), who will be joining the Israeli Defense Forces this summer, says Orange County Hillel was primarily responsible for the cancellation and that the incident is another example of Hillel’s marginalization of Narvy due to his conservative and traditional views.

Nonie Darwish is the founder and president of FormerMuslimsUnited, an advocacy group for Islamic apostates, and Arabs for Israel, an organization that promotes a positive outlook among Arabs toward the Jewish State and advocates for peace in the region. Darwish was born and raised in Egypt during the most tumultuous period of the Arab-Israeli conflict and is the daughter of Col. Mustafa Hafez, former head of Egyptian intelligence in the Sinai and Gaza, who led multiple operations against Israel during the 1950s. Due to his activities, Darwish’s father was killed by the Israeli military in 1956 by a mail bomb when she was 8 years old, which greatly impacted her negative views toward the Jewish State.

Nonie Darwish is among the prominent anti-Jihadists writing today and should therefore be supported.

Progressive western Jews must get beyond the cowardly fear of being called "racist" or "Islamophobic" if they oppose the movement of political Islam. Islam is Islam and so long as it does not seek to impose itself upon the rest of us then I have no grievance, but when Islam is the heart of a political movement - which it most certainly is - then it becomes a problem for all of us who are not both Muslim and male.

This is why Barack Obama's support for the Muslim Brotherhood is such a betrayal of his own alleged values, not to mention a betrayal of the United States, itself, given the fact that the Brotherhood is also the parent organization of both Hamas and al-Qaeda.

What I think is that western Jews need, like Israeli Jews, to learn how to stand up in favor of our own best interests. Western Jews seem to favor everyone but themselves and their people. That is, progressive-left western Jews are profoundly in favor of women's rights and Gay rights and the rights of all minority groups, except their own.

I am suddenly put to mind of Milton Himmelfarb's famous aphorism that "Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans."

It is not very politically-correct terminology these days, but it is still very apt.

What I see - and I know, of course, that many Jewish progressives would vehemently disagree - is a western Jewish community in the process of dividing itself along political lines around the State of Israel. On the one hand we have the left-leaning Jewish western majority which tends to blame Israel for the conflict. That is, the left-leaning western majority of Jews tends to think that the real problem is that Israel is occupying the "Palestinians" and until such a time as the Jews of the Middle East cease this "Occupation" then it will continue to receive the world's reproach and the rebuke of the BDS movement.

In my view, the real problem is one of perception. Progressive-left western Jews tend to believe that the Jews of the Middle East are persecuting the local Arabs and that this represents a very significant infringement upon human rights and it is an infringement that the world-wide Jewish community is largely responsible for because we allow it to continue.

Among those of us who participated in progressive-left western politics, this is the message pounded into our skulls on a daily basis by our supposed allies and colleagues. Ultimately our friends on the left either condemn us for persecuting the innocent, "indigenous Palestinians" or are entirely indifferent to the struggles of the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East, which is generally the case.

Among western intellectuals and political people, considering Israel is not the same as considering Japan or, say, France. Among western opinionaters Israel is considered something of a shabby demon and many within the western progressive-left would not be the least bit sorry to see the country either destroyed in a brutally violent confrontation with the hostile Arab majority or simply dismantled into yet another non-Jewish, anti-American, anti-Western, majority Arab state.

What I think is that Jews throughout the world should stand up unequivocally behind our brothers and sisters in Israel because if we do not, no one else will. That much is certain.

This does not mean that we should be uncritical. I am, in fact, highly critical of Israel and am absolutely horrified that a Likud government under Benjamin Netanyahu actually released the murderers of Jews from Israeli prisons. My disgust with this behavior is so profound that I considered giving up pro-Israel advocacy, entirely. Why should any of us stand up for the Jews in the Middle East when their own government will not stand up for themselves?

4 comments:

If you gave up pro-Israel advocacy, what kind of advocacy would you do?

As for the post, this is not a surprise, but a necessary ingredient to open the eyes of the ignorants.

It takes things like this, and like the Nigerian kidnappings to effectuate the sea change that brings us to see that Islam, just like any other religion, is subject and even deserving of criticism, especially when it manifests in ways that threaten our bodies and values.

Now that the mainstream media has discovered Boko Haram, will they run a little farther before the retreat back in to deference to the so-called religion of peace, or start to connect the dots to the history and facts.

I do not see much of a trend towards western progressives coming to acknowledge the fact of political Islam.

It's damn odd, I have to tell you.

They simply will not acknowledge that which is staring them directly in the face and they scream to the heavens that those of us who do acknowledge the obvious are terrible, racist monsters who must be shunned.

These progressives are not going to be persuaded. Some will acknowledge when they must, but others, the large group that are the illiberals, will go down with the ship. The intolerance they show to people that have spoken about Boko Haram cannot be hidden from people who are tolerant.

The ignorants mentioned are not necessarily progressives, but includes progressives that do not possess sufficient knowledge of the actuality and have adopted a prejudiced narrative, but retain the capacity to change.

It looks there may be a wave election coming. Perhaps it is because Americans beyond the coasts realize the peogressive propaganda for what it is, empty and divisive. That this election may be momentous is evidence of a potential sea change, which may even have begun, that these events help to bring about.

As I said before. I don't care that Nazis exist and that they hate Jews and that freshly scrubbed students flock to them just as they did in the 1920's and 30's. What I care about is that they've stolen the name "Hillel", 'open' or otherwise. Call yourselves whatever you like as long as it's not Hillel or anything related to Jews, Judaism or Israel.

Barack Obama on the so-called "Arab Spring" (May 19, 2011):

"There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat."

The "Arab Spring" was the brutal rise of political Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to?

The Fundamental Argument:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) "Pallywood."

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.

This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.

Quote of the Whenever:

It is not that most progressives are anti-Semitic. They aren't. It's that they don't get it, they don't care, and they very much want you to shut the fuck up. - Michael Lumish